1,024 Quotes About Writing-process

Write a storyA story about yourself
A story about your lifeNow, believe it Now write another story, same subjectA better storyMore interestingStronger characters. Now, believe that. Just keep writingYou have plenty of time

The writer should find his style and voice in language, and train his mind into using the short or common words that his ego would not make him remember. In writing, you are selling a story, not words, to the readers.

A story is a magnificent painting that draws you in and captures your attention with words.

Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.

It's all mine, it's all sacred.

The role of a novice and professional writer coincide but are not identical. We expect more insight – ideas from the professional – and expect more realism from the novice.

Essay writing is an act of rebellion against walking through life as an empty intellectual shell and as an emotional vacuum. Essayists attempt to bridge the gap between meaningful self-exploration and raising conscious awareness of the larger world that we occupy. Essayist need to understand, they seek to broker compromises with the past, and meld truths out of broken shards of their history.

To apprehend things—walking on a hill, seeing the light change, the mist, the dark, being aware, using the whole of one’s body to instruct the spirit—yes, that is a secret life one has and knows others have. But to be able to share it, in and through words—that is what frightens me ... It dissolves one’s being, I am no longer myself but a part of a life beyond myself when I read pages which are so much an expression of myself

The irony that all writers confront and must overcome is that the writer is afraid to commence, frightened to finish what is slowly becoming an embodiment of oneself, and terrified that unless they do complete their manuscript that all their effort will remain stillborn.